A group of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) workers were detained for staging a protest against Shamsul Islam, a noted researcher, author and former associate professor of political science at the University of Delhi, who was scheduled to speak at Mangaluru University on Saturday, September 9. The lecture went ahead as per schedule at the Ravindra Kala Bhavan in the university campus despite the disruption by the ABVP members.
The event featured the publication of the names of 132 freedom fighters from Karnataka who hailed from varied backgrounds, castes, religions, and sects, and were martyred during the 1857-58 anti-British revolt. It was Shamsul Islam who compiled the names of the martyrs who hailed from areas near present-day Gadag, Yadgir, and Koppal among other places.
“The protest (by ABVP) was against the very organisation of his lecture by claiming that he is anti-Hindu and will talk on communal issues,” says Jayaraj Amin, the Vice Chancellor of Mangaluru University. ABVP members held placards which read ‘Do not impose Left ideology on campus’.
“We refute these claims. Shamsul is a researcher and academic who has compiled the names of freedom fighters from Karnataka who were martyred in the 1857 revolt. He made a point that it included both Hindu and Muslim martyrs and that there was a sense of communal harmony in the revolt against the British,” says Jayaraj.
The names were compiled from Dictionary of Martyrs: India’s Freedom Struggle 1857-1947, a book commissioned by the Union government’s Ministry of Culture, and from contemporary British official documents including ‘Mutiny Records’. A list of all 132 names was published as a poster in the event held at Mangaluru University on Saturday.
At the event, a Kannada translation of Shamsul’s book, The Untold Amazing Stories of 1857, was also released. “Shamsul’s research is also an important marker to highlight that the 1857 revolt was a mass movement that included people from south India,” Jayaraj Amin says.